The Dark Knight Rises: A Film for the Age of Obama

I saw the film The Dark Knight Rises with my family last week. I thought it went on too long, some of the various plot threads were confusing and the film required too much suspension of disbelief, above and beyond what is usually required in a superhero film. It will not make my top ten list of favorite films for the year. However, what is stunning about the film is that it conveyed fundamentally conservative messages. Andrew Klavan tells us how, and the usual spoiler alerts apply:

Yet while repeatedly tainting the free-market tea party movement with a racism it doesn’t espouse and linking it to violence it doesn’t commit, many creatives and journalists lend moral support to the socialist “occupiers”—underplaying the widespread vandalism, lawlessness and grotesque anti-Semitism characteristic of their demonstrations.

“The Dark Knight Rises” is a stinging, relentless critique of that upside-down and ultimately indefensible worldview. And why not? Our chattering classes frequently tell us that art should speak truth to power and shock the bourgeoisie. It just never seems to occur to them that “the power”—and the modern Babbitts of the bourgeoisie—are themselves.

Later, after Bane’s revolution has destroyed the investment class with mob violence and show trials and thus plunged Gotham City into chaos, Catwoman and her fellow thief enter a ransacked house. “This used to be someone’s home,” mourns Catwoman, her conscience awakening. “Now it’s everyone’s home!” exults her unrepentant colleague, gloating over the ruin.

The world of the film is our world, and the direct opposite of the world imagined into being by our intelligentsia. Here, free markets and investments, while creating super-wealthy men like the philanthropist hero Bruce Wayne, also create a rising tide of money that lifts the rest of us. Meanwhile, the forcible redistribution of private property is identified as theft, the forerunner of disorder and despotism.

But the heart of the film is not money. It’s people and what they choose to make of the injustices of their lives. Catwoman is the linchpin of that theme. She is the link between those like the heroic capitalist Wayne, who allow hardship to temper their souls, and those like Bane, who cling to their hurts and demand to be repaid in societal destruction. Catwoman begins as a thief making revolutionary proclamations: “There’s a storm coming.” She ends up confronting the true nature of that storm and a choice between that and freedom’s better way.

Go here to the Wall Street Journal to read the brilliant rest. Other conservative messages in the film:

1. A heroic Catholic priest attempting to rescue the orphans that he is looking after.

2. An “Occupy Wall Street” type kangeroo court passing death sentences on the rich and the police.

3. Unarmed cops donning their uniforms and charging into battle en masse to take back Gotham from Bane and his cutthroats.

4. Heroic Army special forces.

In many ways the film could be viewed as a jaundiced look at many of the national trends brought to us courtesy of the Obama administration. Absolutely astounding that this came out of Hollyweird.

7 Responses to The Dark Knight Rises: A Film for the Age of Obama

And the Democrats were going to use the criminal Bane as a play against Romney’s Bain. I do not think they are capable of seeing and understanding the truth, whether it be portrayed in entertainment fashion or given to them straight like medicine.

I finally saw the movie last night, and can definitely see the implicit conservative, or rather anti-radical message. And, fwiw, it would definitely make my top ten list (not that I’ll even see ten movies). It was certainly better than the Avengers.

I don’t think the Occupy movement is going to be happy with this movie. I don’t know the Nolans’ background, but they appear to be students of history. I was struck by the scene where the Stryver character is brought in front of the kangaroo court. His appeal to the arch villain Bane echos the appeal of Genrikh Yagoda to Stalin during his show trial. It’s nice to see that there are few people out there who know that history loves re-runs.

So, I’m not quite sure the actual reviewer nor the original poster of this quite got the message. To believe this movie is inherently conservative or anti-radical is pretty absurd. The movie’s message can be seen as quite radical. In fact, quite radical to the nth degree. Wealthy Capitalists and vagabonds are seen as the destructive forces inside of Gotham CIty. The League of Shadow, the major organization in the movie, has sought to destroy Gotham from the first movie. Their leader blamed the cold, criminal, and apathetic wealthy alongside the lower blue collar criminals. The point was that crime was rampant in every sector of life in Gotham. What Dark Knight Rises, and its source material suggests, is that when compassion, heroism, and justice are absent from a society, it crumbles. Absolutely crumbles. In each movie of the trilogy, wealthy trample the poor, poor trample the wealthy, and the government uses lies and deception to improve their circumstances. In fact, the movie makes its attempt at throwing away both forms of life. This is echoed in the film’s final moments when “Robin” repeats that rules become shackles, to which he then is implied to take up the mantel of Batman. It’s a view of American society as a whole, not just against the Obama administration.